LONDON — Nine years after former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko drank radioactive tea at a London hotel, an inquiry into his death ended Friday with his widow claiming President Vladimir Putin ordered the killing — and Moscow accusing Britain of politicizing the probe.

Litvinenko, who fled to London in 2000 and became a fierce critic of Putin, died three weeks after drinking tea laced with radioactive polonim-210. On his deathbed, he accused Putin of ordering his assassination — a claim Moscow denies.

His death continues to be an irritant in worsening relations between the two countries. And despite a six-month inquiry that heard from 62 witnesses, putting anyone on trial for the killing remains a remote prospect.

Outside London’s Royal Courts of Justice, Marina Litvinenko said the inquiry had revealed that “my husband was killed by agents of the Russian state … and this could not have happened without the knowledge and consent of Mr. Putin.”

Her lawyer, Ben Emmerson, called Putin a “tin-pot dictator” who had ordered the “liquidation” of an enemy.

The Russian Foreign Ministry slammed the public inquiry, saying that “despite its name it is not transparent, either for Russia or for the general public.” It said Moscow had been “actively assisting” the British probe until it began to fear it could be used for political ends.

Emmerson said Moscow had attempted “to frustrate and manipulate” the investigation from the start, by refusing to co-operate and raising objections and obstacles.

British police have accused Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi — the two Russians Litvinenko met for tea — of carrying out the killing, sponsored by elements in the Kremlin. Both deny involvement, and Moscow refuses to extradite them.

That stalemate lasted for years, and investigations into the death were further delayed by Britain’s reluctance to disclose secret intelligence evidence about Litvinenko and his links to U.K. spy agencies.

Last year the government announced a judge-led public inquiry. The judge, Robert Owen, has seen the secret evidence, though lawyers, press and the public have not.

British detectives and scientists told the inquiry that scientific evidence points to the guilt of Kovtun and Lugovoi, a former agent in the KGB’s successor, the FSB. Traces of highly radioactive polonium were found in hotels, restaurants and other sites across London that they visited.

Litvinenko’s killing, with its brutality and echoes of Cold War intrigue, soured relations between London and Moscow. They have since deteriorated further, as the West imposes economic sanctions on Russia over the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Owen is due to report by the end of the year on who killed Litvinenko, and whether the Russian state was involved. A finding of direct involvement by Putin would likely bring calls for more sanctions, and another downturn in U.K.-Russian relations.

MOSCOW — Larry King’s back on the air, beaming his high-octane brand of talk to households around the world. Where can you catch him? Kremlin-backed TV.

Moscow wants you to pay better attention to what it’s saying, and to better reach your eyes and ears it’s spending around a half-billion dollars a year and carrying top-name talent like King and former governor and professional wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura.

Worried that the Russian message is getting through, Western countries are pushing back, including with a proposed “action plan” that European Union leaders are discussing at a summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday.

As relations with the U.S. and some of its allies become more publicly fractious and at times openly hostile, Russia’s government has assembled a gigantic media machine not only for its own people, but to target a foreign audience from Warsaw to Washington with news items like these:

The Kremlin’s ultimate goal, President Vladimir Putin has said, is “to try to break the monopoly of Anglo-Saxon media over the global flows of information.”

Western governments have disseminated their own brand of news and information for years, as has Russia. The United States, Western European countries and some Latin American and Asian ones sponsor media that broadcast their particular world views around the globe.

What sets the new Russian effort apart, experts say, is how comprehensive, sophisticated and unrelenting it is.

“The West is playing 19th century Victorian boxing while Russia is using karate,” said Ben Nimmo, a former NATO press officer who writes about security issues.

On the shows carried by the Russian government-financed, English-language television channel RT, King does the same thing that made him a legend on CNN: interviewing newsmakers, show biz figures and “celebrities” of all calibres.

Themes chosen by Ventura, a former Navy SEAL and one-term governor of Minnesota, are typically harder-edged. RT shows with Ventura this month featured “torture whistleblower” John Kiriakou, quoted as saying the CIA “is run by lunatics,” and scrutinized the U.S. Federal Reserve, dubbed an “illegal institution” in an RT promo.

RT management did not respond to Associated Press requests for interviews, and AP got no response to requests through the station for comment from King and Ventura. On her blog, RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan has said she is determined to offer overseas audiences an alternative view on events, and is driven by love for Russia.

“I realize why I keep working at a channel which is alone facing thousands, tens of thousands of Western media outlets, telling the other side of the story, finding itself in the cross-hairs of those media and struggling to fend off their attacks. Because it’s my Motherland,” she wrote.

For Lt. Col. Simon West, a British Army specialist on strategic communications, RT’s programming lineup is a canny move designed to achieve both audience share and trust.

“Larry King, well, you and I know him. He’s a chap of great broadcasting credibility,” said West, consultant at a Riga, Latvia-based facility opened by NATO member states last year in large part to address the information challenge from Moscow.

Polish parliament member Witold Waszcyzkowski said it’s part of a strategy that leaves many viewers unaware that they have tuned into a Kremlin-bankrolled information source, since the typical RT newscaster “sounds like your neighbour.”

Indeed, in the view of many Western analysts, Moscow’s new brand of information for export has dropped the Soviet-era pretention that the Russians were building a virtual workers’ paradise, and sometimes appears focused on discrediting U.S. and European leaders and institutions in the eyes of their own citizens.

“If you follow the RT Twitter feed, as I do to my eternal teeth-gritting annoyance, it’s full of stories of racism in the U.S., police corruption in the UK, gay propaganda in Sweden,” Nimmo said.

RT’s oft-repeated slogan is “question more.” In the final analysis, Britain’s ambassador to NATO told AP, Russian media may not be trying to persuade foreign publics, but to confuse them.

“They aren’t concerned to prove they are right, but to muddy the information space so much that it’s hard to get the truth through,” Sir Adam Thomson said.

Unlike its Western competitors, Putin said last year as he celebrated the inauguration of RT service to Argentina, the Kremlin-backed channel “does not aggressively impose its own views on others.” But EU leaders, at odds with Moscow since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, generally disagree, and will try to agree on countermeasures at their Brussels summit.

“We’re not winning because we’re not doing,” said Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius.

Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images

The draft EU “action plan on strategic communication,” obtained by AP, calls for an array of measures including the creation by Sept. 1 of a special team to parry “Russia’s ongoing disinformation campaigns.”

If approved by EU heads of state and government, the special unit would be in charge of anticipating and replying to any “disinformation” targeting the bloc, and working with member states to alert them to the dangers of such campaigns.

In the U.S., Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, in March testimony to a House committee, requested more than $20 million in new funding for State Department programs “to counter Russian propaganda.” Already in fiscal 2013, budgets for the government-financed Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty operations totalled $288.5 million.

Nuland said Moscow’s wide-ranging effort to sway Western leaders and publics includes funding political campaigns and “false NGOs” that defend Russian interests. Russia has also organized “troll farms” of pro-Kremlin bloggers and social media posters to disseminate its official view and attack those who disagree.

Major brands in the export division of Russian mass media include RT, the RIA Novosti news agency and its Sputnik radio and website. Despite the pounding Russia’s economy is taking from the slump in the price of oil and the West’s Ukraine-related sanctions, government funding for RT has grown by 30 per cent since 2014, to the ruble equivalent of $289 million.

In the United States, Comcast carries RT to many of its 22 million video subscribers in 39 states and Washington. The channel, which already broadcasts in English and Spanish, is adding French and German.

On some subjects, especially what’s happening in Ukraine, RT just completely toes the Kremlin line

During two recent semesters, classes at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York monitored RT and drew a number of conclusions.

“On some subjects, especially what’s happening in Ukraine, RT just completely toes the Kremlin line,” said professor Ann Cooper, summing up the findings. Also, “they’re not going to criticize Putin.” For a Russian government-bankrolled medium, that may have been predictable.

But what surprised her students, Cooper said, was the quantity of programming on the channel that would likely appeal to a U.S. or European audience “that doesn’t trust government, is pretty cynical about government and is open to believing in certain conspiracy theories.”

For such viewers, the journalism professor said, “there is quite a lot on RT.”

Dahlburg reported from Brussels. Edie Lederer at the United Nations, Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow and Matt Lee in Washington contributed.

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine is open to considering proposals to place a ballistic missile-defence system on its territory to ward off the risk of attacks from Russia, a senior Ukrainian defence official said Wednesday. So far no one has offered.

Oleksandr Turchynov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security Council, told Ukrinform news agency in an interview that Russia has become an increased threat since annexing the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and increasing its military presence there.

Russian news agencies cited Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying Wednesday that the deployment of a missile-defence system in Ukraine would force Russia to adopt countermeasures.

Ukraine has repeatedly raised alarms about what it sees as Russia’s aggressive military posture. It says Moscow has actively supplied separatists in east Ukraine with arms and manpower and that it routinely bolsters offensive capabilities in western Russia.

“Can I be absolutely clear with you, this is not a fight with Russian-backed separatists, this is a real war with Russia,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said in an interview with the BBC.

Poroshenko’s government is concerned that Russia is making concerted efforts to move its nuclear capabilities to Crimea, which was absorbed by Moscow in 2014 following a referendum almost universally rejected by the international community.

“That the annexation of Crimea has significantly increased Russia’s military capabilities and changed its balance of military power in the Black Sea and Mediterranean is understood by all our partners,” Turchynov said. “But nobody goes beyond issuing statements and expressing deep concern.”

“Ten Iskander-M tactical missile systems have already been delivered to the peninsula near the village of Shcholkine and Krasnoperekopsk,” Turchynov told Ukrinform.

Russian Defence Ministry officials have also said they will deploy long-range, nuclear-capable Tu-22M3 bombers to Crimea.

Turchynov suggested that the West should consider improving its own security by barring Russian warships from passing through the Bosporus Strait — the narrow stretch that divides Turkey between its European and Asian parts and links the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.

NATO’s U.S.-led missile-defence plans envisage deploying elements of the missile shield around Europe for what it says would be defence against Iran. Moscow sees this as a threat to its nuclear deterrent.

An unmanned Russian spacecraft is spinning out of control and is set to plummet to Earth next week.

The Progress M-27M spacecraft, carrying three tonnes of supplies for astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS), entered an “uncontrolled descent” Wednesday and is expected to plunge to earth sometime between May 7 and 11.

Russia was forced to abandon the $45 million resupply mission after engineers struggled to regain control of the ship when it spun out of control soon after launch on Tuesday.

Igor Komarov, the head of Russia’s Roskosmos space agency, said: “Additional tests today revealed that further controlled flight and safe docking with the ISS is impossible. We’re working on options for scuttling the ship.”

AFP/Getty ImagesRussia's Progress M-27M cargo ship blasts off from the launch pad at the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on April 28, 2015.

But the flight ran into difficulty when telemetric communications failed just a second and a half before separation of the rocket’s third stage, causing it to enter an erroneous orbit.

Last night it was spinning through space at an altitude of 198km, having already lost several kilometres of altitude.

Alexander Ivanov, Mr Komarov’s deputy, declined to speculate on the exact cause of the incident, but said a commission would seek to establish what went wrong by May 13.

“It is too early to say who or what is to blame,” he told reporters at a hastily convened press conference in the agency’s Moscow headquarters on Wednesday.

He declined to predict exactly where the ship would fall, but said calculations suggested it would re-enter the atmosphere “somewhere over the Pacific” sometime between May 5 and May 7.

The crash is unlikely to pose any threat to residents or trans-Pacific shipping, however, as the entire craft is expected to burn up as it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere.

Progress vessels are routinely disposed of in this way after being loaded with rubbish from the ISS.

Despite the loss of nearly three tonnes of supplies, Russian officials insisted the incident will not pose any threat to the three Russian, two American, and one Italian astronaut on board the station. “There is sufficient oxygen, fuel, food, and water for the station to keep operating until the next resupply flight. I’ve spoken with the astronauts and they are in high spirits,” said Alexander Sovolov, deputy chief designer at Russia’s Energia spacecraft builder and the official in charge of supplying the Russian section of the ISS.

ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/Getty ImagesHead of the Russian ISS orbital mission Vladimir Solovyev attends a press conference on the situation with the Progress M-27M cargo ship in Moscow on April 29, 2015.

“The [out of control] craft is in too low an orbit to pose any risk of collision with the station,” he added.

While the $45 million cost of the hardware and launch will be recovered by insurance, the incident represents a blow to Russia’s beleaguered space industry, which has been struck by cost-cutting and a series of corruption scandals.

Roscosmos is set to cut spending by a third over the next decade in response to a downturn in the Russian economy.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. is protesting an intercept of a U.S. reconnaissance plane by a Russian fighter jet last week, calling it “unsafe and unprofessional” amid what it views as increasingly aggressive air operations by Moscow.

Pentagon spokesman Mark Wright on Sunday said the U.S. was filing a complaint to Russia after the April 7 incident over the Baltic Sea.

Russian officials have denied their pilot did anything wrong, according to several news reports.

According to the Pentagon, the U.S. RC-135U plane was flying in international airspace north of Poland. U.S. officials say a Russian SU-27 fighter intercepted the U.S. aircraft at a high rate of speed from the rear, and then proceeded to conduct two more passes using “unsafe and unprofessional manoeuvres” in close proximity.

“Unprofessional air intercepts have the potential to cause harm to all aircrews involved. More importantly, the careless actions of a single pilot have the potential to escalate tensions between countries,” Wright said.

“This air activity takes place in the context of a changed security environment in view of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine,” he said.

It isn’t the first time the U.S. has protested to Moscow what it considered to be an unsafe intercept. Last April, a Russian fighter jet intercepted a U.S. reconnaissance plane in international airspace over the Sea of Okhotsk.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/unsafe-intercept-of-u-s-plane-by-russians-in-international-airspace-could-escalate-tensions-states-says/feed0std060314-f-2907c-291Tens of thousands of Russians take to the streets to protest assassination of Putin critic: ‘I am not afraid’http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/i-am-not-afraid-more-than-20000-march-in-moscow-to-protest-killing-of-prominent-putin-rival
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/i-am-not-afraid-more-than-20000-march-in-moscow-to-protest-killing-of-prominent-putin-rival#commentsSun, 01 Mar 2015 16:57:04 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=709530

In one of the largest demonstrations of Russian opposition in years, tens of thousands of mourners marched in Moscow Sunday to honour Boris Nemtsov, a leading figure in Russia’s marginalized and oppressed liberal reform movement.

Mr. Nemtsov, 55, was once thought to be a successor to former President Boris Yeltsin and served as the country’s first deputy prime minister. After Vladimir Putin became president, however, Mr. Nemtsov became one of his most trenchant critics, accusing him of organized corruption and kleptocracy, and trying to rouse political opposition in a country where that comes with grave risks.

He was killed Friday night on Moscow’s Great Moskvoretsky Bridge, in view of St. Basil’s Cathedral, while walking home from dinner with his girlfriend Anna Duritskaya, a Ukrainian model. Caught on grainy security video, the killer apparently fired seven or eight times from a white Lada, with licence plates from the north Caucasus region of Ingushetia, which was later found, and had been reported stolen.

With fears and rumours that the assassination was officially sanctioned, Sunday’s march was tense, with a heavy police presence. Mourners carried flowers, portraits and signs that said “I am not afraid.” Officers reportedly detained a member of Ukraine’s parliament over his alleged involvement in a fatal fire last year in Odessa. The speaker of Ukraine’s parliament called this a violation of diplomatic immunity.

Alexander Aksakov/Getty ImagesPeople march in memory of Russian opposition leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov on March 01, 2015 in central Moscow, Russia.

While the killing of Mr. Nemtsov has shaken the Russian opposition, which sees the Kremlin as responsible, it is unclear whether his death will be enough to invigorate the beleaguered movement.

Despite the Ukraine conflict and Russia’s economic crisis, support for President Vladimir Putin has been above 80% in the past year.

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Mr. Nemtsov was among the few prominent opposition figures who refused to be cowed. But while many at the march expressed respect for his long political career and grief at his loss, few believed that his death would spark major change in Russia because of the Kremlin’s control over national television, where a vast majority of Russians get their news.

“Maybe if 100 people were to die people would rise up, but I don’t really believe in that,” said Sergei Musakov, 22. “People are so under the influence of the (TV) box that they will believe anything that television tells them. If it tells them that terrorists from the Islamic State group came to Russia in order to blow up the fifth column, they’ll believe it.”

The Kremlin had identified Nemtsov as among the leaders of a “fifth column,” painting him and other opposition figures as traitors in the service of a hostile West.

In one of his last interviews, Mr. Nemtsov said his elderly mother begged him to stop criticizing Mr. Putin for fear it would get him killed. A fellow opposition activist said Mr. Nemtsov had obtained documentary evidence of Russian military actions in Ukraine that he was about to release.

As a Russian dissident who died in mysterious brutal circumstances, he joins a list that includes Alexander Litvinenko, a defector from the Russian secret service, who was killed by polonium in London in 2006; Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist shot dead in 2006; Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who died in jail in 2009. Marina Litvinenko, Alexander’s widow, told the BBC she thinks Mr. Nemtsov’s death was a government-ordered assassination, though she offered no evidence.

Prosecutors said they had a few leads, and were considering whether the murder was related to the Ukraine conflict, or Islamic extremists, or that it was “a provocation to destabilize the political situation in the country, where the figure of Nemtsov could have become a sort of sacrificial victim for those who stop at nothing to achieve their political goals.”

The chief prosecutor, Alexander Bastrykin, is a loyalist of Mr. Putin, and infamous for threatening to behead a journalist, then investigate the killing himself.

Mr. Putin himself said it looked like a “provocation,” but through a spokesman denied any involvement.

“With all respect to Boris Nemtsov, he did not pose any threat in the political sphere,” the spokesman said. “If we compare his popularity ratings with the government’s… Nemtsov was quite an average citizen.”

Mr. Nemtsov has a reputation as a dashing bon vivant, but his activism brought him into intense conflict with Russia’s security establishment. Writing in the New York Times, author Masha Gessen said Mr. Nemtsov was “one of the first establishment politicians to sound the alarm about the nature of Mr. Putin’s regime.”

Dmitry Lovetsky / Associated PressPeople carry Russian national flags during a march in memory of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov Sunday.

When his party was barred from registering in elections, Mr. Nemtsov was given a travel ban over a dispute about a defamation case. He called it the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union that a travel ban was imposed for political reasons.

Thousands of copies of his book, Putin: The Results, 10 Years On, were seized by police in 2010, to prevent activists from handing them to business leaders at a global meeting. Others were seized by the Federal Security Service directly from the printer.

Speaking via video to a University of Toronto audience at the time, Mr. Nemtsov said “The Russian people are just so tired of Putin and his team that they will ultimately change the system. But the real danger for the country is that there will be a bloody revolution.”

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch exiled to Switzerland after serving a long prison term after falling afoul of Mr. Putin, said Mr. Nemtsov’s murder could set Russia on a path toward civil war.

“I know that for many people Boris’s death will become so much of a Rubicon that the entire country may become different,” Mr. Khodorkovsky wrote on his website. “Will we find ourselves standing even closer to the precipice of all-out war of everybody against everybody? Or will we find within ourselves the strength to understand that political differences are not a reason to stop acting like human beings?”

“For more than a year now, the television screens have been flooded with pure hate for us,” he wrote of the opposition to Mr. Putin. “And now everyone from the blogger at his apartment desk to President Putin, himself, is searching for enemies, accusing one another of provocation. What is wrong with us?”

Dmitry Lovetsky / Associated PressRussian marchers commemorted the memory of murdered opposition leader Boris Nemtsov who was gunned down on Friday near the Kremlin.

Fighting raged in eastern Ukraine Wednesday, killing five people at a bus station in the rebel stronghold of Donetsk, as Western leaders confirmed that they would take part in peace talks later in the day.

Steffen Seibert, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said she and French President Francois Hollande would travel to the Belarusian capital, Minsk, to attend the four-way summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

European leaders have warned that there is no guarantee a deal will be reached with Moscow, which the West says is fueling a separatist rising in eastern Ukraine with troops and arms. Germany and France have rushed to mediate after a recent uptick in violence in the region, where fighting has killed at least 5,300 people since April.

In Donetsk, rebel officials said that five people were killed and nine wounded in a shelling attack early Wednesday on a bus station, where an Associated Press reporter saw one body. Donetsk city officials said in a statement that three people had been killed in shelling overnight.

Officials in Kyiv said Wednesday that 19 troops had been killed and 78 wounded in a day of fighting in Debaltseve, a hotly contested transport hub in the region.

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Poroshenko posted a statement on his website saying that he had made an impromptu visit to the region early Wednesday. He stopped in the city of Kramatorsk, some 50 kilometers from the nearest front line, where Kyiv says 16 people were killed and 48 wounded in a rocket strike Tuesday.

“We demand an unconditional peace,” Poroshenko said. “We demand a cease-fire, a withdrawal of all foreign troops, and closing of the border…. We will find a compromise within the country.”

Later, in comments carried by Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Poroshenko said he was “ready to impose martial law across the country if we are not able to reach an agreement today in Minsk.”

At a news conference in Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that there was “notable progress” in the peace process, but gave no details.

Lavrov said the most important goal of the talks would be to implement a cease-fire, and that it would be impossible for Ukraine to re-establish its control over the border with Russia.

“In these conditions, to give away the Russian part of the border also would be to cut them (the rebels) off even from humanitarian help and allow them to be surrounded,” Lavrov said.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said early Wednesday that “quite a number of problems remain” in negotiations, including the future of eastern Ukraine, guarantees about the Ukraine-Russia border, and the prospects of a possible cease-fire, weapons pullback and prisoner exchange.

Fabius said the aim of the talks is to win an accord, but “not just one on paper.”

Yuras Karmanau in Minsk, Belarus, and Laura Mills in Moscow contributed to this report.

AP Photo/Petr David JosekWomen injured during recent shelling between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian government forces lay on beds in a hospital in the town of Horlivka, Ukraine, on Feb. 11.

The Middle East is in crisis, Shia and Sunni at each other’s throat, fanatical terrorists of all kinds killing each other and all hating the Israelis. Ukraine seems to be powerless to deal effectively with Moscow-inspired separatists determined to turn the eastern provinces into Novorossiya, and the West appears unable to get its act together to mount a firm opposition. The Baltic states and much of Eastern Europe look on fearfully. Islamists in Western Europe feast on and foster anti-Semitism, cowing many with their attacks. Who is to blame for this slide into chaos?

The easiest answer, and the one most everyone prefers, is to point the finger at President Obama. American policy has wobbled on almost every issue.

The U.S. and its European allies cannot agree on how best to force President Putin to halt his aggression against Ukraine. The Europeans, led by Angela Merkel and François Hollande, now seemingly favour a neutralized zone that would be de facto recognition of Putin’s victory. The Americans, for their part, are leaning to tough talk and the possibility of providing advanced weapons to a Ukrainian army that is not likely to be well trained enough to use them. All aid short of real help, in other words.

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Very simply, Putin has prevailed in eastern Ukraine, the sanctions that have hurt Russia’s economy (along with the drop in oil prices) nowhere tough enough to force Moscow to re-consider its course. Why should it? Putin’s nationalist rhetoric is hugely popular with his people, and he has consistently buffaloed his counterparts in the West.

In the Middle East, U.S. policy again is completely uncertain in its aims. The Republican Congress, extraordinarily acting without consulting the White House, invited Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to address it. The President, who can only hope that Israeli voters toss out Netanyahu, is furious but unable to do anything. Obama, meanwhile, continues to try to deepen ties with Iran in a (vain) effort to bolster the fight against the Sunni Islamists who make up the hitherto triumphant ISIS legions.

Can it really be in American interests to let Iran spread its power even further?

The U.S. administration also desperately wants a nuclear deal with Tehran, a pact that Washington believes will slow the Iranian march toward nuclear weapons. The Israelis believe that the U.S. has completely misjudged the Iranians, who seem to be extending their control throughout the region — Damascus and Beirut are already dependent on Iranian gold, and now Yemen, its Houthi rebels apparently in firm control of the country, responds only to the mullahs in Tehran. Can it really be in American interests to let Iran spread its power even further? Does anyone, except Obama, truly believe that Iran will abide by any nuclear pact that does result from the ongoing — never-ending — negotiations?

Meanwhile, Syria continues to burn and the explosions and killings in Iraq go on without cease. The Greeks seem intent on pulling the pillars of Europe down with them, and Spain seems interested in following suit. The Western economies are in difficulty, and there is no sign of light at the tunnel’s exit.

Obama is weak, Merkel and Hollande desperate to keep economic ties with Moscow

Who is really to blame for this global mess? Everyone and no one. Obama is weak, Merkel and Hollande desperate to keep economic ties with Moscow. The Iranians are advancing their territorial aims, but their economy is suffering from the fall in oil prices. The Greeks are intent on suicide.

And Ottawa? Canada’s hands are far from clean in all this. Ottawa under Stephen Harper and John Baird talked a tough game against Moscow, Tehran and ISIS, but has done almost nothing of any use. We go along with sanctions on a few Russian individuals of no account; we continue to face-slap the Iranians and keep our embassy in Tehran shuttered; and we deploy a six pack of CF18s and a few Special Forces troops to fight ISIS. But of real action there is little — just Canada’s “principled foreign policy” pitched to electoral considerations, and government policy devoted to cutting the muscle and sinew out of the Canadian Forces. John Baird at least spoke with vigour while carrying the small Canadian stick; Rob Nicholson, his successor, will be unlikely to have enough of the Prime Minister’s confidence even to shout loudly.

Is this the 1930s again? Is there a politician ready to proclaim “peace in our time” once more? It is only a matter of time.

National Post

J.L. Granatstein is a Fellow of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/j-l-granatstein-who-is-really-to-blame-for-this-global-mess-everyone-and-no-one/feed1stdsyriaSyrian president dismisses negotiations with Western ‘puppets’ in interview as Moscow talks to beginhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/syrian-president-dismisses-negotiations-with-western-puppets-in-interview-as-moscow-talks-to-begin
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/syrian-president-dismisses-negotiations-with-western-puppets-in-interview-as-moscow-talks-to-begin#commentsMon, 26 Jan 2015 15:01:12 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=685425

Russia and Syria played down any hopes of a breakthrough in talks set to begin Monday in Moscow, while much of the opposition shied away.

The four-day gathering in Moscow, billed as a meeting to “establish personal contact” between some opposition members and government officials, underscored diplomatic fatigue with the four-year conflict that has killed over 220,000 people.

President Bashar Assad refuses any option that would have him step down. The opposition is fractured between Western-backed opposition figures, rebels lacking effective arms and jihadis surging through Syria.

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“These are not talks, it is a meeting,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a press conference. In the first phase, opposition members were to agree on “common approaches toward talks with the government.”

After two days, “the opposition will be joined by official representatives of the Syrian republic, again simply in order to establish personal contact… We never had any other goals for the Moscow meeting.”

Lavrov’s comments came as Assad also played down the talks in an interview with a U.S. magazine published Monday.

“What is going on in Moscow is not negotiations about the solution; it’s only preparations for the conference,” said Assad in the Foreign Affairs interview.

The main Western-backed opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, is not attending Moscow talks.

In Syria, fighters seized a military base near the southern city of Sheikh Miskeen.

AFP PHOTO/HO/SANAThe rebel attack that killed 7 people in Damascus came two days after they threatened to retaliate for deadly air raids by the Syrian regime against an opposition-held area on the edge of the capital.

The fighters seized weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, he said.

The advance strengthens the rebels’ grip on Sheikh Miskeen, an important southern transportation hub.

In Damascus, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory said seven people were killed overnight as rebels in surrounding towns fired the heaviest barrage of rockets at the city in months. State-run media said the rocket fire killed three people. Conflicting casualty tolls are routine in the aftermath of attacks.

The barrage came after government shelling on a nearby rebel-held area killed 35 people Friday.

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin has used his New Year’s speech to hail his country’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula as an achievement that will “forever remain a landmark in the national history.”

Putin’s comment in his pre-recorded annual address on Wednesday already has been broadcast in Russia’s far eastern regions, where the holiday was celebrated hours ahead of Moscow, given the time difference.

The Kremlin also published several dozen New Year’s messages that Putin has sent to heads of state and international organizations, including one to President Barack Obama.

Putin reminded Obama of the upcoming 70th anniversary of the allied victory in World War II, and said that should serve as a reminder of “the responsibility that Russia and the United States bear for maintaining peace and international stability.” Moscow is anxious for those bilateral relations to advance, but only as long as there is “equality and mutual respect.”

After Ukraine’s former Russia-friendly president was driven from power in February, Moscow sent troops to overtake Crimea, home to a Russian naval base. Those forces blocked Ukrainian military garrisons and set the stage for a hastily called referendum on Crimea joining Russia, which Ukraine and the West rejected as illegal.

The West has imposed crippling sanctions against Russia over the annexation of Crimea and Moscow’s support for a pro-Russian insurgency in eastern Ukraine, where the fighting between the government troops and the rebels has killed more than 4,700 since April.

Under the combined blow of the sanctions and slumping oil prices, the Russian ruble has lost about half its value this year and the national economy has drifted into recession. Putin has promised that the economy will rebound in two years, but he has failed to offer a specific plan for easing Russia’s heavy dependence on oil and gas revenues.

In his speech, Putin praised Crimea’s “return home,” a view widely backed by many Russians who saw Ukraine’s control over the Black Sea region a historic injustice. Crimea only became part of Ukraine when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gave the peninsula to his native land in 1954. That mattered little until the Soviet Union broke up in 1991 and Crimea ended up in an independent Ukraine.

Experts have warned that Putin’s popularity, which soared after the annexation of Crimea, could fizzle quickly amid his nation’s economic downturn. But the Russian leader refrained from directly referring to Russia’s economic woes in his New Year address, praising his citizens for their readiness to stay united “both in days of triumphs and at a time of trials” and to maintain their “unity and solidarity.”

MOSCOW — The Russian Navy on Friday successfully test-fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile for a second time in as many months, proving its reliability following a troublesome development.

The Defence Ministry said the Alexander Nevsky nuclear submarine test-fired a Bulava missile from an underwater position in the Barents Sea. The missile’s warheads reached designated targets at a testing range in Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka Peninsula.

The Bulava suffered many failures during a decade of tests, raising doubts about the fate of Russia’s most expensive and ambitious weapons program since the Soviet collapse. But a series of recent launches has been successful and the Navy now has three Borei-class nuclear submarines armed with the Bulava.

Two of them, the Alexander Nevsky and the Yuri Dolgoruky, named after medieval Russian rulers, already have entered service. The third one has been completed and is waiting to be formally commissioned by the Navy. Overall, eight Borei-class submarines are set to be built.

Like the previous Bulava launch on Oct. 29 from the Yuri Dolgoruky, Friday’s test was essential for confirming the capability of the missile, which Russia touted as a key part of its nuclear deterrent.

With Soviet-built nuclear submarines approaching the end of their lifetime, the Kremlin has made replacing them a top priority in the arms modernization program, which envisages spending 20 trillion rubles (more than US$400-billion) on new weapons through 2020.

According to Russian media reports, the Bulava has a range of more than 8,000 kilometres and is capable of carrying up to 10 nuclear warheads. Military officials have boasted about its ability to penetrate any prospective missile defence.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/russian-navy-successfully-test-fires-new-submarine-based-intercontinental-ballistic-missile/feed5stdRussia New SubmarineChinese and Russian state media use Ferguson unrest to paint U.S. as land of inequalityhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/chinese-and-russian-state-media-use-ferguson-unrest-to-paint-u-s-as-land-of-inequality
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/chinese-and-russian-state-media-use-ferguson-unrest-to-paint-u-s-as-land-of-inequality#commentsWed, 20 Aug 2014 17:29:29 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=506476

BEIJING — Chinese and Russian state media have seized on the U.S. police shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old and ensuing protests to fire back at Washington’s criticisms of their own governments, portraying the United States as a land of inequality and brutal police tactics.

The violence in the St. Louis, Missouri, suburb of Ferguson comes amid tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine, as well as friction between Washington and Beijing over what China sees as a campaign to thwart its rise as a global power.

Both countries have chafed under American criticism of their autocratic political systems — China and Russia tightly control protests and jail dissidents and demonstrators — and the events in Ferguson provided a welcome opportunity to dish some back.

“China gets criticized so much by the West that when something like this happens, it’s convenient to offer a counter-criticism,” said Ding Xueliang, an expert on Chinese politics at Hong Kong’s University of Science and Technology.

The death of 18-year-old Michael Brown on Aug. 9 at the hands of a white police officer has inflamed racial tensions in the predominantly black suburb of Ferguson, where the police force is mostly white. Violent confrontations between police and protesters followed, in which tear gas, flash grenades and Molotov cocktails were exchanged.

A tartly-worded editorial in China’s Global Times newspaper on Tuesday said that while an “invisible gap” still separated white and black Americans, countries should deal with their problems in their own way without criticizing others.

“It’s ironic that the U.S., with its brutal manner of assimilating minorities, never ceases to accuse China and countries like it of violating the rights of minorities,” said the popular tabloid, published by the ruling Communist Party’s flagship People’s Daily.

The Xinhua News Agency ran a similar commentary, tossing in references to enduring racism, National Security Agency spying and drone attacks abroad.

“Obviously, what the United States needs to do is to concentrate on solving its own problems rather than always pointing fingers at others,” Xinhua said.

U.S. criticisms of China centre on attacks on political critics, along with heavy-handed policies toward minorities, especially Tibetans and the Muslim Uighur ethnicity from the northwestern region of Xinjiang.

Washington also chides Russia over its intolerance of dissent and has joined the European Union in imposing sanctions over Russia’s annexation of Crimea and support for Ukrainian separatists.

Both China and Russia have invested heavily in state-controlled news outlets to project their own version of events.

In Russia, state television station Rossiya emphasized the use of force in dispersing protesters in Ferguson, sending the underlying message to Russians that the security forces in the democratic West are no less brutal or tolerant of protest than in Russia. Shots of rampaging protesters also seemed meant as a warning of the dangers of allowing protests to get out of control.

In Monday’s broadcast, a reference to recent U.S. military interventions was thrown in for good measure.

“Everything looked as if it were a military operation somewhere in Afghanistan or Iraq,” said reporter Alexander Khristenko. “Forming themselves into their own kind of fist, the police slowly moved forward, clearing the street, and the people saved themselves by running into residential areas.”

Like Rossiya, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV sent a reporter to report live from Ferguson — something unthinkable in the case of similar unrest in China. It also ran clips from U.S. talk shows blasting the police action and quoted African-American political commentator Richard Fowler saying social injustice was worsening.

“I don’t think it’s just African-Americans. I think what you have is a continued fight between the haves and the have-nots,” Fowler said.

Russia’s always-bellicose Russia Today channel ran an interview with U.S. professor and government critic Mark Mason, who called the Ferguson protests an outgrowth of income inequality and the militarization of American police forces.

“The police protect the Wall Street bankers, who own the City Hall, the City Council, the State House, the Federal government, the president of the U.S. and the Congress,” Mason told the channel.

There were also distinctions between the Russian and Chinese coverage, reflecting domestic concerns and the state of their relations with Washington.

While Russia and the U.S. have feuded bitterly and publicly, Beijing has sought to cultivate a stable relationship with Washington in which it is treated as an equal partner. Unlike in Russia, the U.S. is also widely admired by the Chinese public, who’ve made it a top choice for overseas education, investment and emigration.

China maintains an official policy of non-intervention in other countries’ affairs and says criticisms should be made in private. Too much open vitriol could undermine that position, and apart from the opinion pieces, Chinese media’s coverage of Ferguson has been relatively straight-forward.

The issues of racism and social unrest are also delicate one for China, which has been shaken by a rising number of protests and a string of violent incidents blamed on Uighur radicals seeking to shake off Chinese rule over Xinjiang. Critics say the ensuing security crackdown has led to widespread abuses, including the killing of civilians.

The danger is that overplaying its criticism of the U.S. could open the window for more critical self-reflection among Chinese citizens, especially minority groups, Ding said. “They want to avoid holding an unintended public education campaign.”

The government is aware of that and is likely muting its coverage of Ferguson to avoid comparisons with Xinjiang, said Qiao Mu, director of Beijing Foreign Studies University’s Center for International Communications Studies.

VORONEZH, Russia — Hundreds of Russian trucks carrying aid intended for rebel-held eastern Ukraine remained parked Wednesday in the southern city of Voronezh, their fate shrouded in mystery as Ukraine accused Moscow of plotting to use them as a cover for invasion.

Fighting between government troops and pro-Russian separatists increased as the UN’s human rights office released figures showing the number of people killed in eastern Ukraine appears to have doubled in the last two weeks to more than 2,000.

Other than a few local supply runs, the roughly 260 vehicles in the convoy lay idle at a military base in the southern city of Voronezh well into the afternoon, one day after making the 650-kilometre drive from outside Moscow.

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Ukraine and Russia tentatively agreed Tuesday that the aid would be delivered to a government-controlled crossing in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, which hasn’t been hit by the months of fighting that have wracked neighboring regions. The cargo would then have to be inspected by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

But accord has soured into acrimony, with the spokesman for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko accusing Moscow on Wednesday of possibly planning a “direct invasion of Ukrainian territory under the guise of delivering humanitarian aid.”

Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said “nobody knows” where the convoy is going but he had information it won’t go through Kharkiv.

If the convoy goes further south across a border region under the control of the pro-Russian separatists the government has been battling for four months, that would certainly not involve the Red Cross and will be viewed with profound hostility by the Ukrainian government.

Lysenko said any deliveries of aid “that don’t have the mandate of the Red Cross … are taken as aggressive forces and the response will be adequate to that.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, insisted the aid convoy was on the move inside Russia, but declined to comment on the route. He said the operation was proceeding in full cooperation with the Red Cross.

But Red Cross officials in Ukraine said they have been left in the dark about the whereabouts of the Russian aid.

“The final route is not known. Even at the moment I am trying to find out where the convoy is,” said Andre Loersch, a spokesman for the ICRC mission in Ukraine.

Amid the tensions, Putin traveled to Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula that Russia seized from Ukraine in March, where he chaired a session of his Security Council. A meeting with Putin’s entire Cabinet and most Russian lawmakers is scheduled for Thursday.

Russia says the 1,800 metric tons of aid includes goods ranging from baby food and canned meat to portable generators and sleeping bags. It’s intended for civilians in the Luhansk region, the scene of some of the fiercest fighting. The regional capital of Luhansk has had no electricity for 11 days and only the most essential goods are available, city authorities say.

A spokeswoman for the U.N.’s human rights office, Cecile Pouilly, said in a statement Wednesday that the U.N.’s “very conservative estimates” show the overall death toll in eastern Ukraine has risen to at least 2,086 people as of Aug. 10 from 1,129 on July 26.

Pouilly said at least 4,953 others have been wounded in the fighting since mid-April.

Intense shelling hit main rebel-held city of Donetsk overnight and into Wednesday, killing at least three people, the city said.

In addition, at least 12 militiamen fighting alongside government troops were killed in an ambush outside the city, a spokesman for their radical nationalist movement said Wednesday.

Artem Skoropatsky said the Right Sector volunteer fighters were shot dead while traveling on a bus and many others on the bus were wounded and taken captive. He did not know how many.

“There is a suspicion that the wounded will be treated very harshly and could be shot,” he said.

Right Sector played a marginal if highly visible role in the protests that culminated in the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych in February. Its far-right nationalist affiliations have made it a target of lurid reporting in Russia state media, which has sought to cast the post-Yanukovych government as extremists.

In Kiev, Lysenko said Wednesday that 11 servicemen were killed in the previous day’s fighting, but he could not immediately say whether that figure included the Right Sector militiamen.

Government troops have laid siege to Donetsk and nearby rebel holdings in their push to quash the pro-Russian insurgency. They have largely refrained from street-to-street fighting, favoring often inaccurate rocket fire.

Residents said the intermittent artillery barrage lasted around two hours. City authorities said 10 residential buildings and the wing of a hospital were struck.

While Seddon has embedded a number of Sotkin’s photos, which show him in southern Russia taking selfies, it’s this one the communications specialist posted, in rebel-controlled Krasna Talycha in east Ukraine, that’s most intriguing:

Russia has repeatedly denied having troops inside east Ukraine. So this seemingly harmless selfie may have just blown the whole show. The soldier also posted another photo of himself on July 5, from Krasny Derkul, which is also in Ukraine:

With Instagram’s geotagging feature, these two photos pulled the latitude and longitude from the GPS on his phone or tablet, placing him well inside Ukraine. Location data is added to photos as long as the user selects “add to photo map” before posting.

Since it’s based on GPS data, geolocation on Instagram is usually pretty accurate. However, as Seddon writes in his post, there is always the possibility Sotkin “spoofed” his GPS signal, or more simply put: used equipment to fake a location signal.

Even if that’s the case, it doesn’t seem it would make much sense.

Instagram/sanya_sotkin

The soldier’s photo map.

There’s reason to be skeptical; it just seems strange Russian military involvement in the region could be revealed in such a way:

But it’s believable if you consider these types of operational security (OPSEC) issues are so common in the U.S. military that troops are required to go through formal training to learn of the dangers. One only needs to search certain military-specific hashtags on Instagram to find all kinds of photos of U.S. military personnel stationed worldwide.

“A U.S. Government official on sensitive travel to Iraq created a security risk for himself and others by tweeting his location and activities every few hours,” one briefing slide reads from the U.S. Army’s Joint Base Lewis-McChord, which warned of the dangers. In mentioning geotagging, the brief noted the location-based services “bring the enemy right to the Army’s doorstep.”

Still, U.S. intelligence and a vast amount of open-source data, like social media posts and videos from east Ukraine, have offered a large amount of evidence suggesting that Moscow has been supplying pro-Russian separatists with training, intelligence, and sophisticated weapons systems.

While the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine are tied to Russian intelligence, there hasn’t yet been clear evidence of the Russian military operating across the border. However, there have been reports of Russian troops firing artillery over the border in recent days, according to Washington Post.

It’s worth mentioning that Moscow denied having troops in Ukraine’s Crimea as well, before Russian President Vladimir Putin finally acknowledged “Crimean self-defense forces were of course backed by Russian servicemen” in April.

The world intrudesIn an op-ed in TheGlobe and Mail, Stephen Harper urges Western nations to continue “punish[ing] the Putin regime” with a broader array of sanctions, and says “it is difficult to foresee any circumstance under which … Russia could be readmitted to the family of G7 nations” while Putin’s in charge. The Prime Minister also pledges unstinting financial support for Ukraine, and urges same from our allies. L. Ian MacDonald, writing at iPolitics, suspects Harper wrote the piece himself — because “no speechwriter would propose such strong language.”

The Globe‘s Doug Saunders says we shouldn’t be surprised by Europe’s “slow, uncertain and ambiguous” response to Putin’s “authoritarianism, imperialism and ethnic nationalism,” even as it seriously threatens the continent’s longstanding peace. Basically, he argues, everyone is in a state of ideological panic: “Suddenly Europe’s conservatives have been forced to choose between the EU or Moscow.” U.S. support for the Ukrainian democracy movement presented the “anti-American left” with “an impossible, head-exploding paradox.” And all Cold Warriors can think to do is line up missiles along the Iron Curtain. “What needs to be sought is not an amplification of Mr. Putin’s myth of a divided continent,” Saunders argues, “but an end to it.” That means sanctions for Russia, and EU membership for Ukraine.

George Jonas, writing in the National Post, accuses Israel’s critics of mischaracterizing self-defence as violent aggression. He calls it “moral illiteracy — or would be, if it didn’t manifest itself so often among morally hyperactive groups and individuals.” Conspicuously missing from all the denunciation, as Jonas says, is some suggestion of what Israel could do differently under the circumstances to protect its citizens.

In the Toronto Star, Haroon Siddiquisays exactly what you’d expect him to say about the Conservatives’ policy vis-à-vis Israel and Gaza; laments that Justin Trudeau has now aligned himself with it; and suggests the Liberal leader is “facing a backlash,” as a result, “with many Canadians already saying that their infatuation with him is over.” He doesn’t say who any of these “many” are.

Andrew Mitrovica, writing for iPolitics, considers all three major party leaders’ responses to the conflict “indecent,” indicative of no serious thought given to the plight of children in Gaza. Harper may at least be sincere. But Mitrovica thinks Thomas Mulcair’s pro-Israel stance is part of a quest for “legitimacy” in the “neocon press,” while Trudeau, he suspects, is merely after some fake “gravitas.”

In the Sun Media papers, neither Ezra Levantnor Lorrie Goldsteinthinks Hamas is even remotely interested in peaceful coexistence with Israel, and thus neither thinks it’s particularly helpful for Western leaders to badger Israel to seek such an outcome.

Summer in OttawaNow that he’s no longer Stephen Harper’s director of communications, Andrew MacDougallgets to wonder aloud “why the Canadian Armed Force can’t just buy kit off the shelf,” “why regional development agencies exist and why hundreds of government-funded interest groups never seem to conquer the problem they were ‘temporarily’ set up to address.” And he gets to tell CBC.ca readers that “supply management is rubbish,” which it is. We’re not sure he needed to explain why he, as an employee, had to toe the party line despite his personal beliefs. We’d be more interested in why so few in the Conservative caucus seem willing to open their mouths on these subjects.

The Star‘s Heather Mallick quite rightly rolls her eyes at the Canadian Revenue Agency’s distinction between poverty prevention and poverty alleviation — the latter being charitable, in the taxman’s eyes, and the former not. But she’s not sure charities should be dooing either. “I have always been skeptical of big charities raising money for tasks that to me are clearly the function of government — medical research or feeding and housing the indigent, for instance,” she says. “When I donate, I make it easier for Ottawa to shrug off unprofitable people and their annoying list of needs.” That’s very principled of her. We’re sure the sick and indigent are most appreciative.

While she concedes there may be sound economic logic to the move, Ashley Chapman, writing in the Star, raises some valid concerns about lowering the maximum age at which dependent children can accompany their immigrant or refugee parents to Canada to 18 from 21. As she says, some excellent potential immigrants and some legitimately imperilled potential refugees might choose to go elsewhere or remain at risk. (We would add: Canadian families don’t tend to treat their 19-year-olds as fully independent adults. Why should we treat future Canadians differently?) Of course, running an effective immigration system is always going to involve some seemingly hardhearted choices. Chapman says “this is what happens when we let economic motives determine our immigration policy.” But our immigration policy has always been economically motivated, just like every other country’s. The notion that it has been and should be purely a humanitarian undertaking is a Weird Canadian Thing.

On the same topic, the Vancouver Sun‘s Douglas Todd argues that Canadians’ humanitarian energies are too focused on arguing that pretty much everyone who gets here should be allowed to stay, and not focused enough on the many poorer and more imperilled people stuck in their countries of origin — and not focused at all on the negative effects mass, permanent migration can have on those countries. He thinks the global refugee system, in particular, needs a comprehensive rethink. We couldn’t agree more.

The Post‘s John Ivison thinks Justin Trudeau’s pledge to farm out Senate appointments to “a non-partisan committee” makes it easier for Stephen Harper to stick to his guns and not appoint more Senators. “If [Trudeau] is as good as his word, it removes the only credible reason why the Prime Minister would open himself up to the criticism that would inevitably flow from mass Senate appointments — the potential loss of the Conservative majority in the wake of an election defeat in 2015,” Ivison observes. Indeed. But would Harper really take Trudeau at his word in that regard? It seems unlikely to us. And even if he did, and even if Trudeau followed through, we suspect his idea of a non-partisan committee, and the committee’s idea of a suitable appointment, might differ markedly from Harper’s.

As an aside: Ivison’s column quotes a “veteran Conservative senator” to the effect that there’s no need to fill the vacancies. How sad is it that a Senator, with 100% job security, won’t even put his or her name to an opinion that helps his or her party?

The Sun Media editorialists welcome forthcoming tweaks to Canada’s gun laws. For example, they think if you’re licenced to own a handgun, it rather makes sense that you should be able to transport it to and from a firing range under strict conditions without getting a special permit each time. Prince Edward Island’s chief firearms officer, on the other hand, thinks that might be the end of human life as we know it, give or take.

In the Star, CBC CEO Hubert Lacroix explains his plan to turn the Mother Corp. into a “lighter, faster” public broadcaster. There will be more digital content, less in-house production, less real estate, fewer jobs. Still, the generalities vastly outweigh the specifics.

The Post‘s editorialists, ever in search of safer summers for our children, declare war on Canada’s trees, after one in Saskatchewan threw a child to the ground and broke his leg. “This isn’t northern Westeros. And we’re not the Starks,” they say. “We prostrate ourselves at the altar of safety, not the blood-red weirwood.” Sharpen those axes, Canadians. We’ve got work to do!

Duly notedThe Star‘s Carol Goar reports that no matter how far afield they go, “no matter where they shop, Northern Ontarians “won’t see cantaloupes, fresh pears, bunches of raw broccoli, inside round steak or 200 gram blocks of partially skim mozzarella cheese,” or “at lest half” of the other items in the province’s “healthy food basket.” If that sounds wrong to you, that’s because it is wrong — obviously, demonstrably, and weirdly wrong.

In Le Journal de Montréal, Mathieu Bock-Côté continues his battle against Quebecers who dare mix French and English in their conversations. They may think they are doing so of their own free will, he concedes. But in fact, they are consenting to anglophone dominance.

Full Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today: With the downing of Malaysian Airlines FH17, Vladimir Putin is discovering it’s impossible to put the genie back in the bottle.

For months now, Moscow has been secretly arming and supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine. The plan was to undermine the new government in Kyiv and destabilize the country.

But rebels have a nasty habit of rampaging out of control. Headed by Igor Strelkov, a messianic Muscovite, who is possibly a GRU military intelligence officer, they have become more Russophile than Putin himself and want to join the Motherland.

Members of this rag-tag bunch are also trigger-happy. After downing at least 10 Ukrainian military planes in the past month, they fired on the civilian airliner, killing all 298 people on board. Apparently they mistook it for an Antonov AN-26, a transport plane.

Their boastful account of this act of terrorism appeared on VK, the Russian equivalent of Facebook . It was quickly deleted, apparently after they realized what they had done.

The timing is awful for Putin, notes BusinessWeek’s Romesh Ratnasar. The crash came less than a day after the U.S. and Europe announced a new round of sanctions against Russia, targeting the country’s biggest banks and energy companies, all controlled by his cronies.

To the vast majority of Americans, Russia’s meddling in Ukraine has largely seemed of peripheral importance to U.S. interests. That calculus has changed … Putin has far more to lose from a prolonged confrontation than does the West. His finance ministry has already warned that additional sanctions would crush economic growth. And as more Russian businesses get squeezed and living standards deteriorate, Putin’s base of political support will crumble.

It may take months, even years, but Putin’s recklessness is bound to catch up to him. When it does, the shooting down of MH 17 may be seen as the beginning of his undoing.

Writing in Foreign Affairs magazine, Alexander J. Motyl says the incident could considered a war crime .

The downing of a civilian plane may conceivably qualify as a war crime, inasmuch as it entailed the unwarranted militarily destruction of a civilian target. At any rate, it was certainly an atrocity and an act of terrorism. And if Girkin — an ethnic Russian who hails from Russia and who, by some accounts, is still an officer in the Russian military intelligence service, which would make him officially subordinate to Russia’s president — really was involved, Putin might arguably be politically responsible for the crime.

At the Sydney Morning Herald, Paul McGeough explains how the rebels’ remarks also give the lie to Putin.

Despite Moscow’s claims that the rebel movements are homegrown, key positions in the leadership in Donetsk, in particular, are held by Russians. One of them is Igor Girkin, who goes by the nom de guerre of Strelkov, or “The Gunman,” who is said to have authored the social media claim that his men shot down another Ukrainian aircraft about the time the Malaysian aircraft was hit.

The 41-year-old Girkin undermined Moscow’s efforts to distance itself from the fight when he estimated, in a Russian TV interview, that as many as two-thirds of the rebels were not local. He said: “The unit that I came to Slavyansk [north of Donetsk] with was put together in Crimea. I’m not going to hide that – it was put together by volunteers.”

The New Yorker‘s David Remnick has been talking to Gleb Panovsky, a former Putin advisor, who believes the Russian leader has also unleashed forces at home he can no longer control.

The nightly television broadcasts from Ukraine, so full of wild exaggeration about Ukrainian “fascists” and mass carnage, are a Kremlin-produced “spectacle,” said Pavlovsky. “Now this has become a problem for Putin, because this system cannot be wholly managed.” The news programs have “overheated” public opinion and the collective political imagination.

“How can Putin really manage this? … The audience is warmed up and ready to go; it is wound up and waiting for more and more conflict. You can’t just say, ‘Calm down.’ It’s a dangerous moment. Today, 40% of Russia wants real war with Ukraine. Putin himself doesn’t want war with Ukraine. But people are responding to this media machine. Putin needs to lower the temperature.”

MOSCOW — A rush-hour subway train derailed Tuesday in Moscow, killing 19 people and sending at least 150 others to the hospital, many with serious injuries, Russian emergency officials said.

Several cars went off the track in the tunnel after a power surge triggered an alarm that caused the train to stop abruptly, the Emergency Situations Ministry said in a statement.

Rescuers have recovered seven bodies and are working to extract 12 more trapped in two wrecked train cars, Alexander Gavrilov, deputy chief of the Moscow emergency services, told reporters in a televised call.

Of the 150 reported injured, least 50 of them are in grave condition, Moscow health department chief Georgy Golukhov was quoted as saying by the Itar-TASS news agency.

The Russian capital’s airports and transit systems have been hit by several terrorist attacks in the past two decades but multiple Russian officials on Tuesday vigorously dismissed terrorism as a possible cause.

Vladimir Markin, spokesman for the Investigative Committee, said in a televised briefing that investigators were considering a fault in the train cars among the possible causes.

VARYA VALOVIL/AFP/Getty ImagesA cellphone photo shows rescuers working near a derailed subway train in a tunnel between Park Pobedy and Slavyansky Bulvar stations in Moscow Tuesday.

Gavrilov of the emergency situations ministry said outside the Park Pobedy station in west Moscow that over 1,100 people were evacuated from the train, which was stuck between two stations.

Park Pobedy is the deepest metro station in Moscow’s subway system — 84 metres deep, which made the rescue particularly hard. The station serves the vast park where the World War II museum is located.

The Moscow Metro is one of the most famous subway systems in the world, known for its palatial interiors with mosaics, chandeliers and marble benches.

Traffic on between the stations is likely to be suspended for at least two days, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.

MIKHAIL JAPARIDZE/AFP/Getty ImagesRescuers carry an injured passenger from the station Tuesday.

Injured people were being taken out of the subway station on stretchers. Paramedics carried one woman covered with a blanket to the lawn by the famous Triumphal Arch and put her on a medical helicopter, one of four seen taking off from the park.

In the scorching summer weather authorities provided drinking water to survivors, some of whom were sitting near the station’s entrance in a state of a shock.

Earlier photos on social media showed passengers walking along the tracks inside the dimly lit tunnel.

A man with a bloody cut on his brow told Rossiya 24 television outside the Park Pobedy station that he felt a jolt and the train abruptly came to a halt.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2XLiMY_XdY&w=940&h=529]

“There was smoke and we were trapped inside,” he said. “It’s a miracle we got out. I thought it was the end.”

While accidents are regular occurrences in the Moscow Metro, deadly incidents are rare.

AP Photo/Russian Emergency Situation MinistryWorkers were seen trying to force open the mangled doors of the car where dead bodies are supposed to be Tuesday.

AP Photo/Ivan SekretarevParamedics, a police officer and a volunteer carry an injured man out from a subway station Tuesday.

WARSAW — Last month, Andrei Kuznetsov left his native St. Petersburg and flew to Ukraine. When he arrived at the Kyiv airport, he asked for political asylum. The bemused guards, unaccustomed to any sort of asylum-seekers, let alone Russian asylum-seekers, couldn’t figure out what to do with him. Finally, he told a Radio Liberty reporter, “They let me in as a tourist and gave me the link to a U.N. site with procedures for applying for asylum.”

Since arriving, Kuznetsov has found it easy to adapt: “There’s no prejudice against me as a Russian citizen. There’s much greater room for personal expression here than in Russia. So I can continue to blog much more freely, without censorship, without fear that the FSB [the Russian secret police] is going to call and ask questions.” Another compatriot, Aleksei Baranovsky, feels the same way: “It’s much simpler for a journalist to work here, because the media market is competitive. The pay is lower than in Russia, but there’s greater freedom of speech and it’s possible to find media outlets that correspond with your core beliefs.”

They may not be typical, and they may not yet be numerous. They certainly don’t outnumber the thousands of Ukrainians who have been displaced by violence in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, some of whom are now refugees in Russia, and some of whom have made their way to western Ukraine.

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But the new wave of Russians now settling in Kyiv does reflect a momentous change. Not long ago, a quite senior, quite well-known Russian journalist came to see me. He was looking for a job — any job. Or rather, any job outside Russia. Nothing bad had happened to him, but he was worried about the worsening climate for journalism, the shrill tone of government propaganda, and the general hostility toward people like himself — people with foreign friends and connections.

He was also worried about the possible reinstatement of the “exit visas” for which the Soviet Union was once notorious. Since the invasion and occupation of Crimea, several million Russians have been forbidden to leave the country. These include employees of the Interior Ministry, Defense Ministry, Federal Prison Service, Prosecutor General’s Office and Federal Migration Service, among others. In total, about 4-million government employees are now unable to travel abroad. Few if any of them — secretaries, clerks, drivers, lawyers — possess anything resembling a state secret. The purpose of the ban is rather to prevent Russians from seeing that the outside world is attractive in any way, and to keep them loyal to the regime at home.

Many who fear these travel bans — as well as capital controls, a new ban on swear words, and restrictions on blogging — have already left. According to the U.N., about 40,000 Russians asked for political asylum in 2013, the largest number of any country except for Syria. Some go to Europe, or even India or Thailand. Russian is now a common language on the streets of Dubai.

The Ukrainian army is still fighting a vicious war for control of the eastern part of the country, and Russian threats are frequent and ominous

But for a certain kind of Russian, Kyiv holds a particular attraction. Although the standard of living in Ukraine is still low by either Moscow or European standards, Kyiv is a bilingual city. Russian emigres don’t have to give up their language. More to the point, its new government doesn’t discourage writers, journalists and activists. Long dismissed by many Russians — and by almost everyone else — as nothing more than a provincial capital, Kyiv is now set to become an intellectual refuge for those who now find Moscow too oppressive.

There is a precedent for this kind of migration. After the destructive violence that followed the Russian revolution, writers, artists, aristocrats, businessmen and intellectuals slowly began to reconstruct Russian culture outside of the country. Many went to Prague, others to Paris. The hero of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel The Gift, finished in 1937, lives in a Berlin boardinghouse, writes Russian poetry and craves the approval of emigre Russian critics, just as if he were still at home in Moscow.

If Berlin was no safe haven in the 1930s, neither is Kyiv. The Ukrainian army is still fighting a vicious war for control of the eastern part of the country, and Russian threats are frequent and ominous. Just a few days ago, yet another senior Russian official described Ukraine’s mild association agreement with Europe as a deliberate challenge to Russian sovereignty. Economic and political reforms leading to a more prosperous society are Ukraine’s best answer to this kind of aggression. And if Kyiv begins producing great Russian-language journalism, television and eventually poetry and literature, then the response, and the contrast, will be starker still.

DONETSK, Ukraine — Deep strains emerged Thursday in the ranks of Ukraine’s pro-Moscow insurgents as dozens turned in their weapons in disgust at Russian inaction and bickering broke out between rebel factions.

In the past two weeks, Ukrainian government troops have halved the amount of territory held by the rebels and have grown better equipped and more confident by the day. Once fearful of losing further pieces of Ukraine to Russia, they have shifted their strategy to containing the insurgents, whose pleas to join Russia have been ignored by President Vladimir Putin.

Pushed back into Ukraine’s eastern industrial city of Donetsk, the pro-Russia militias appear to be focusing their efforts now on hit-and-run operations, bombing transportation links and bracing for more assaults from government forces.

Signs of a rift within the rebellion became evident Thursday when the head of the influential Vostok battalion announced he would not submit to the authority of the military leader of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, Igor Girkin.

Girkin, a Russian better known by his assumed name Strelkov, has attained hero status among supporters of the insurgency. Ukrainian authorities have identified him as a former Russian military intelligence agent active in taking over Crimea before Russia annexed it in March.

Yet he has also been criticized by some for leading the rebel withdrawal last weekend from the eastern city of Slovyansk, 110 kilometres north of Donetsk, reportedly to protect civilian lives.

Vostok commander Alexander Khodakovsky alluded to that.

AP Photo/Dmitry LovetskyAn elderly woman comes back to her flat in a building damaged by shelling in Mikolaivka village, near the city of Slovyansk, Donetsk Region, eastern Ukraine Thursday, July 10, 2014.

“There cannot be a single leader giving orders,” he declared. “Because if Strelkov suddenly decides what he wants is – in the interests of protecting the lives of Donetsk citizens and the lives of militiamen – to abandon Donetsk, then we will not follow his orders.”

Khodakovsky was speaking in Makiivka, a town just outside Donetsk, where his men relocated after a reported falling-out with Strelkov.

The ill will also appears to stem from a feeling among the rebels that Russia has done too little to help them.

“Strelkov is a military officer of non-local domicile, while we are locals and will not, therefore, allow the people of Donetsk to remain without our support and protection,” Khodakovsky said.

Strelkov could go back to Russia whenever he wanted, he noted.

Ukraine says Moscow is arming and supporting the rebels, charges it has denied.

In another sign of deteriorating morale among the rebels, several dozen militia fighters garrisoned in a university dorm in Donetsk abandoned their weapons and fatigues in their rooms Thursday.

“Russia abandoned us. The leadership is bickering. They promise us money but don’t pay it. What’s the point of fighting?” said 29-year old Oleg, a former miner.

AP Photo/Dmitry LovetskyA building damaged by shelling is seen in Mikolaivka village, near the city of Slovyansk, Donetsk Region, eastern Ukraine Thursday, July 10, 2014.

Oleg, who declined to give his surname for fear of being punished for desertion, said he had served in the militia for a month and planned to go home to Makiivka.

Strelkov has admitted substantial difficulties enlisting the support of the locals in eastern Ukraine.

“In truth, the number of volunteers for the several million-strong population of Donbass, for a mining region where people are used to dangerous and difficult work, has been somewhat low,” he told a rebel-run TV station this week. “It is very difficult to protect this territory with the forces at our disposal.”

At a news conference, the prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic dismissed talk of infighting.

“These are lies and disinformation. There are no disagreements. We are now organizing our joint work,” Alexander Boroday said.

He said 70,000 Donetsk residents have been evacuated from the city and more will follow. He did not elaborate.

While rebels hold Donetsk, the city’s international airport, which has been closed since early May, remains in government hands. Militia forces mounted an artillery assault on the terminal Thursday.

AP Photo/Dmitry LovetskyEugenia Gubareva, left, cries after finding clothes belonging to her parents, who were killed in a building destroyed by shelling in Mikolaivka village, near the city of Slovyansk, Donetsk Region, eastern Ukraine Thursday, July 10, 2014.

“Our aim was not to capture the airport. The enemy sustained serious casualties,” Strelkov said.

His claim could not be independently verified.

Rebels regularly conduct lightning attacks on checkpoints, and earlier this week they blew up three bridges leading into Donetsk to hinder the movement of Ukrainian troops.

While waging what increasingly resembles guerrilla warfare, Strelkov has said he wants to transform the rebels into a regular standing army with a unified command. The rebel leadership also said this week it will pay its soldiers monthly salaries of $500 to $700.

The plans to create a professional army also reflect the inability to recruit more volunteers.

“I know many of them from school. I support them, but I am not going to fight,” said 39-year laborer Artyom Yermolyuk. “What awaits them when this is all over and the Ukrainian authorities are here?”

DONETSK, Ukraine — High-calibre weapons fire echoed sporadically Tuesday through the eastern city of Donetsk and the mayor urged residents to stay home a day after fighting between Ukrainian troops and separatist rebels reportedly killed dozens.

Donetsk mayor Oleksandr Lukyanchenko said 40 people, including two civilians, were killed after troops repelled a rebel attempt Monday to seize control of the airport, Ukraine’s second-largest.

Local morgues were overflowing with bodies Tuesday and rebel leaders said the death toll could rise up to 100.

The city of about 1 million was mostly quiet in the afternoon after an arson attack in the morning that torched a local hockey rink. Occasional gunfire was heard in the morning outside Donetsk airport.

The battles came as billionaire candy magnate Petro Poroshenko claimed victory in Sunday’s presidential vote, which authorities in Kyiv had hoped would unify the deeply divided nation. Poroshenko, who is yet to be sworn in, has vowed to negotiate a peaceful end to the insurgency in the east, but also has called the separatists “Somali pirates” and promised he would stop them from sowing more chaos.

The bodies of about 30 insurgents were brought Tuesday to a hospital morgue in Donetsk, said Leonid Baranov of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, who was at the Kalinin morgue. The fighters had been wounded and were being transported to a hospital in a truck when it was shot up by government forces, Baranov said.

AP Photo/Vadim GhirdaThe blood of pro-Russian gunmen killed in clashes with Ukrainian government forces around the airport stains the pavement next to a bullet outside a city morgue in Donetsk, Ukraine, Tuesday, May 27, 2014.

Baranov said up to 100 rebels were probably killed in Monday’s fighting, adding that many bodies had not yet been recovered because they were in areas under government control.

“As they are controlling the airport and the fight was there … we cannot right now identify exactly how many victims we have,” he said, adding that hundreds were also wounded in the fighting.

He said the morgue was too small to hold all the bodies and authorities were searching for refrigerator trucks pending identification of the dead.

AP journalists saw many dead bodies piled up at the Kalinin morgue but could not immediately count them or confirm Baranov’s statements.

Another Donetsk insurgent leader, Denis Pushilin, also said up to 100 people have been killed and asserted that up to half of them could be civilians, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

Pushilin said government snipers were firing at people trying to evacuate the bodies. His comments also couldn’t be independently confirmed.

FABIO BUCCIARELLI/AFP/Getty ImagesUkrainian firefighters work on extinguishing a fire at the local sports hall in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, on May 27, 2014.

Early Tuesday, unidentified men stormed Donetsk’s main ice hockey arena and set it ablaze, according to the mayor’s office. The arena, owned by a local Ukrainian lawmaker, had been scheduled to host the 2015 World Championships.

By Tuesday morning, Donetsk airport was under full government control, Ukraine’s acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said, adding that dozens of insurgents may have been killed but government forces did not suffer any casualties.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, meanwhile, said it had lost contact with one of its four-man monitoring teams in Donetsk on Monday evening. There was no immediate claim of responsibility but rebel groups have previously kidnapped OSCE monitors in Ukraine.

In the neighbouring Luhansk region, which like Donetsk has declared independence from the central government, the Ukrainian Border Guards Service said its officers repelled a group of gunmen from Russia who were trying to break through the border. It said one intruder was wounded and the border guards seized several vehicles loaded with Kalashnikov assault rifles, rocket grenade launchers and explosives.

The interim government in Kyiv has pledged to press ahead with the operation against insurgents, which has angered residents, many of whom see the government as nationalists bent on repressing Russian speakers in the east.

AP Photo/Vadim GhirdaBlood of pro-Russian gunmen, killed in gunfights with Ukrainian government forces around the airport stains stains the tyre of a truck as human remains are scattered around outsideDonetsk, Ukraine, Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Speaking at a televised government session on Tuesday, Vitaly Yarema, a deputy prime minister, said the “anti-terrorist operation” in eastern Ukraine will go on “until all the militants are annihilated.”

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov voiced strong concern Tuesday about the decision to intensify the military operation in the east and called for an immediate end to fighting.

Lavrov warned Poroshenko against trying to win a quick military victory before his inauguration, saying that it would be “unlikely to create favourable conditions for a hospitable welcome in the Donetsk region.” He promised that Russia will be Poroshenko’s “serious and reliable partner” if he moved to negotiate an end to hostilities.

Poroshenko, known for his pragmatism, supports building strong ties with Europe but also has stressed the importance of mending relations with Moscow. Upon claiming victory, he said his first step as president would be to visit the troubled east. He said he hoped Russia would support his efforts to bring stability and that he wanted to hold talks with Moscow.

Lavrov welcomed Poroshenko’s promise to negotiate with people in the east and said Moscow was ready for direct talks with Poroshenko – without the United States or the European Union as mediators.

FABIO BUCCIARELLI/AFP/Getty ImagesUkrainian medical staff prepare to clean the body of a killed pro-Russian fighter at the Kalinina morgue in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, on May 27, 2014.

But Ukraine’s acting Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said Ukraine has no intention of talking to Russia directly.

“The government’s stance is unchanged: bilateral talks without the presence of the United States and the European Union do not seem possible under current conditions,” he said.

Moscow has denied accusations by the authorities in Kyiv and the West that it has fomented the insurgency in eastern Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in March but has stonewalled the eastern insurgents’ appeal to join Russia.

Russia, however, has kept pushing for Ukraine to decentralize its government, which would give more power to the regions and allow Moscow to keep eastern Ukraine in its sphere of influence.

Nataliya Vasilyeva and Laura Mills in Kyiv, Ukraine and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.